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THE GRASS IN THE PAVEMENT. 



The Grass in the Pavement 



BY 



M. E. BUHLER 

"A child said, What is the grass?" (Walt Whitman) 




NEW YORK 

JAMES T. WHITE & CO 

1918 



* 6 * 



* 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 

For the privilege of reprinting the following verses, 
grateful acknowledgment is made to the New 
York Sun, New York Times, Century, Outlook, 
Bellman, Churchman, Catholic World, Ark, Reedy's 
Mirror, Pan American Magazine, and other period- 
icals. 



COPYRIGHT BY JAMES T. WHITE & CO 
1918 



FEB -8 W* 

©CLA511572 



CONTENTS 

THE DREAMER 8 

The Grass in the Pavement 9 

Bubbles 10 

Idolatry II 

Dust 12 

A Lunar Rainbow Over Broadway 13 

The Shattering of the Vessels 14 

The Wisdom of the Foolish 15 

The Inscrutable Gods 16 

Earthbound 17 

The Towers of Silence 18 

A Mexican Exdle 19 

The Worshipper 20 

The Dewdrop 21 

The Builders 22 

Invictus 23 

The Unbelievers 24 

The Symphony 25 

The Workers 26 

The Purpose 27 

Maker of Men 28 

The Mediators 29 

The Call of the Sire 30 

The Song Makers 31 



The Sponges 32 

The Judgment of the Dead 33 

Invocation 34 

The Artist 35 

A Twentieth Century Prayer 36 

The Deluge 37 

Colors in the Dark 38 

Cloud Pictures 39 

The Stone That the Builders Rejected 40 

The Autumn Star 41 

Dream 42 

Currency 43 

Diamonds 44 

The Winged Globe 45 

The Road to Yesterday 46 

Orion 47 

The Road of the Returner 48 

Give 49 

From the East 50 

Ineffaceable 51 

Remembrance 52 

Sahara 53 

All Awry 53 

To the Mummy of a King Who Was Slain 54 

The Fadeless Vision 55 

Thothmes the Third 56 

The Sower of Life 58 

Earth Music 59 



The Big Trees of California 60 

At Amiens 61 

Immanuel 62 

The Gift 63 

Loyalty 64 

Dropping the Burden 65 

Forward 66 

Rainy Day in the Park 67 

To an Idler 67 

The Noon Hour at St. Paul's 68 

A Poet Passes 69 

John-a-Dreams 70 

The Algae in Bronx Park 71 

The Vanished Earth Gods 7a 

The Shadow 73 

In City Hall Park 74 

The Dark 75 

The Wrecker of the Hospital 76 

At Half Mast 77 

At a West Indian Observatory 78 

The Melting Pot 79 

On the Face of the Waters 80 

A Frosted Window 81 

Shakespeare in the Spring 82 

A Crimson Feather Duster 82 

The Shakespeare Garden in Central Park 83 

At Night Fall 84 

The Singing Ice in the Park 85 



5 



The Scourge of God 86 

After Sunset on the Hudson 87 

The Birds of Bryant Park 88 

An Incident in Flanders 89 

In a Vacant Lot 90 

A Cry in the Night 91 

Mammy : 92 

To an Ancient Sleeper. 93 

Medusae 94 

Woodlawn 95 

From the Talmud 96 

Faith 97 

The Watcher at the Gates 98 

At the Winter Solstice 99 

On the Housetop 100 

A Pearl of the Faith 101 

Evening at Camp Mills 102 

Old Youth 103 

Horses 104 

The Unexpected 105 

The Lost Seal 106 

The Archetype 107 

At a Menagerie 108 

From the Dark 109 

Gunda's Prayer no 

A West Indian Sabbath 1 1 1 

At the Turn of the Year 112 



THE GRASS IN THE PAVEMENT. 



THE DREAMER. 

CICORN not the dreamer, ye who strive 
^* In busy marts the goal to win; 
By other ways shall he arrive, 
And other gates shall enter in. 

In touch with nature's mysteries, 
His is the heart that understands; 

To paint the picture that he sees 
His are the artist's skillful hands. 

Like that far dreamer of Judaea, 

Who, true of heart and wise of brain, 

Was made Egyptian Pharaoh's seer 
And saved the King's domain. 

Up from the River crept the lean, 
Long years across the desert sand; 

Behold, the Dreamer rose serene 
And fed the famished land! 

So to the Seer the power is given, 
And time fulfills the vision dim; 

The Sun and Moon and Stars eleven 
Bow down and worship him! 



THE GRASS IN THE PAVEMENT. 

"God," cried the grass in the pavement, 
"Am I not worthy of living, 
Who am green in the waterless places 
And subsist in the clefts of the stone? 

"Where the feet of the horses trample 
And wheels go passing and passing, 
By strong desire of living 
I live, but am barren and lone! 

"Give me the fields of my birthright, 
The shade of the quiet cool places; 
There may I live to Thine honor, 
Abundant, rejoicing, full grown!" 

"Child," came the Voice in the stillness, 
"Know I not well thou art worthy, 
Thou who declarest my glory 
Where dearth and destruction are rife? 

"Therefore have I set thee in lonely 
And parched and desolate places: 
Are the weakest and least of the legions 
Placed in the van of the strife? 

"Know I not well thou art worthy? 
I have chosen thee over all others, 
Thou who art potent, unyielding, 
And strong in the fullness of life!" 



BUBBLES. 

SHATTERED in the primal 
Warfare in the heavens, 
Lo, the holy spirit 
In mankind incarnate, 
Lives in myriad fragments! 

Prisoned, bound, and hapless 
In discordant bodies, 
Evermore it seeketh 
Union, as the rivers 
Seek again the ocean. 

So in homes and cities 
Drawn by strong attraction 
Men foregather, blindly 
Seeking one another, 
In pathetic discord. 

For the flesh dissevers 
And the body prisons; 
Yet the spirit striveth, 
Bound, though never yielding, 
Drawing men together; 

Till the carnal housings 
Weaker grow and finer, 
With the strain of living 
And the stress of being; 
And like long blown bubbles, 



10 



161-2 



Gorgeous, many colored, 
Flashing with a radiance 
Delicate, ethereal, 
In a mist of glory 
Burst at last asunder. 

So the prisoned spirit 
Quit of life and living, 
Mingles with the ether. 
With all other spirit, 
And is one forever! 



IDOLATRY. 



MY spirit flies from star to star 
In search of thee, my all in all. 
From star to star the shadows fall 
And lie before me like a bar 
Of darkness thrown by light afar 

Beyond the spheres where thou must be; 
And turning thither, seeking thee, 
I find again the shadows are. 

So deep the shade, so dark the spheres — 
So darker, darker, one by one, 

As on I pass, each star appears — 
I know beyond the utmost sun, 

Sun-shadowed, on my yearning sight 

Thyself shall burst in dazzling light! 

11 



THE DUST. 

I AM the dust, and I creep and crawl 
In at the window and over the wall; 
Over the pictures and over the books, 
And gather to rest in the unswept nooks. 

I am a part of all that has been, 
Living or dead the world within; 
Dissolved by time and freed by rust 
To a million million fragments of dust. 

Dust of the monarch and dust of his crown 
Dust of the cap and bells, and the clown; 
Dust of the warrior and dust of his sword; 
And dust of all of the hosts of the Lord. 

Dust of the slayer and dust of the slain, 
Dissolved in the whirling void again; 
Dust of the women who gave them birth; 
And dust of all living and dead of the earth. 

Out in the farthest atmosphere 

I float and drift as I drift in here; 

Shining in rays of the uttermost stari 

As I shine in the beams of the casement bars. 



12 



A LUNAR RAINBOW OVER BROADWAY. 

I the old dead moon, 
, White in the sun 
Back of the drifting clouds, 

Look down upon 
You and your teeming life, 

Babylon! 

Jewelled in red and gold 

Night after night, 
Wheels your kaleidoscope 

Of broken light, 
Color of strife begot, 

Peace being white. 

So on these circling mists 

Strange colors glow, 
That speak of storm and stress 

Long, long ago, 
In the forgotten life 

1 used to know. 



13 



THE SHATTERING OF THE VESSELS. 

IN the Hall of the Great Vases a rushing Wind 
went by, 
And there fell to the earth a vessel, 
Shattered in fragments. 

Many-shaped, many-colored were the pieces, 
According to the pattern of the vessel; 
Some large, and some small, 
But most of them as the dust of the pavement. 

And men passing, said: 

"Behold, the flocking of the birds!" 

For there flew out across the world 

Great and small birds, 

And they that were as insects in Brazilian forests. 

And again I beheld in the Hall of the Great Vases 

That a mighty Wind swept by; 

And there was blown to the earth an innumerable 

multitude of vessels, 
Whose fragments, large and infinitely small, 
Were as the motes in the Sunbeam, 
Or the Zodiacal Light gathered about the Sun. 

And behold, in all places of the earth, 
The flocking of the birds! 



14 



Their songs filled the silences of great conflict, 
And in the darkness of the nights was heard 
The impalpable, soft beating of their wings. 

The forest leaves rustled' with their flitting, 
The fong grasses of the plains with their motion, 
And over the waters the seagulls stooped to their 
prey. 

From solitary high places the eagles sought the sun; 
And in the streets of the cities men paused in their 

hurrying, 
Stepping carefully, 
Lest they trample upon little wings. 



THE WISDOM OF THE FOOLISH. 

AS falsely a fond mother promises 
Her pleading child the thing for which he frets, 
Knowing the while it never can be his, 

Yet soothing with vain hope till he forgets; 

So nature leads us an appointed way 

With promise of the things our hearts implore, 

Until by false hope drawn, at close of day 
We have forgotten, and desire no more. 



15 



THE INSCRUTABLE GODS. 

THEY make the fire to burn, 
Yet keep the green wood wet; 
And urging life to understand 
They let it still forget. 

For when we seek to learn, 

They baffle and abet, 
And make youth slow to understand 

But slow, slow, to forget; 

And when the long tides turn, 

They urge and hinder yet; 
For age, grown quick to understand, 

Is quick, quick, to forget. 

O strange gods, kind and stern, 

That build and then upset, 
What would you? Lest we understand 

Too much, must we forget? 

Or, seeing all fuels burn 

To ashes, must we let 
The soul flame on to understand. 

But what it burns forget? 



1G 



EARTHBOUND. 

MANY fathoms deep I lie 
Under Water, Earth and Sky; 
I, the firstborn, primal Fire, 
Buried deep by deep desire! 
God, who called me from the void, 
Shall I thus be self-destroyed? 
Let me go back whence I came, 
One with elemental flame! 
Prisoned in these earthly walls, 
Blinded, bound, my spirit calls. 
What need I of mortal life, 
All my soul with being rife? 
What remains for me to learn, 
Who lit Thy blazing suns to burn? 
What remains for me to know, 
Who set Thy circling tides to flow? 
Is there aught for me to find 
Who loosened Thine ethereal wind? 
Need have I for mortal birth, 
Who helped to swing Thy rounded earth? 
Back of all the kalpas I 
Knew the Wherefore and the Why. 
God, who wrought me of desire! 
God, who shaped my soul of fire! 
I, the firstborn, wild and free, 
First of all to answer Thee, 
Why should I thus prisoned be? 

17 «, '-•* 



THE TOWERS OF SILENCE. 

IN the ancient city's shade 
Roofless towers of granite rise, 
Where the Parsee dead are laid 
Uninterred beneath the skies. 

Central in the circling walls 
Lies a well, whose waters deep 

Catch the sunshine as it falls 
On the silence of long sleep; 

Catch the brooding radiance cast 
By the stars' supernal light, 

And the planets wheeling past 
In the swiftly turning night; 



Catch the first long lingering ray 
Out across the darkness whirled 

By the white dawn, as the day 
Wakes again the living world. 

Yet shall not the vanished thought 
To its temple come again; 

Nor the crumbling bones be wrought 
Into what had once been men. 



18 



A MEXICAN EXILE. 

AMID the ruins of his ancient people 
In the Museum waits Xochipilli, 
Lord of the Flowers — with bud and blossom graven 
From brow to naked knee. 

With sunken eyes whose sad, far-seeing glances 
Sweep through the casements open to the sky, 

He sees, beyond a waste of restless waters, 
An old world buried lie. 

His spirit yearneth for the vanished nation, 
Through all the desolate, slow-creeping hours, 

That sought strange gods with sacrifice unholy 
But unto him brought flowers. 

Methinks the Lord Xochipilli beholdeth 
A flowery land set deep in tropic seas; 

And murmurously amidst the languorous sweetness 
He hears the droning bees. 

For where he broods high up amid the ruins 

There wafts an incense as from Maya skies — 

Strange hands have laid wild blossoms on his altar 
In ancient sacrifice! 



19 



THE WORSHIPPER. 

EVER have I been a worshipper 
Of all the changing gods. 
Strange beings in the twilight have I honored, 
Whose remembrance has vanished from the earth. 

To Ra have I given glory in the sunlight, 
And praised him in the waters of the Nile. 
On the peaks and in the deep caverns of Asia 
I have bowed before the Dragon of the Sun, 
And Siva sitting in darkness. 

Yea, when the waters lay deep upon the continents 

I worshipped Ea in Eridu; 

And with the sunrise kneeled to Shamash in Sippara. 

To Oannes, rising amid the islands of the sea, 

Have I made obeisance; 

And bowed down before Baal in Babylon. 

Before Assur have I borne fire and water; 
And lifted the Serpent in the wilderness, 
Following Jehovah. 

By winding rivers and by inland seas of the Kassites 
Have I adored their strange gods; 
And have come up out of long darkness singing of 
Pharamond. 

I have heaped the red fires of Moloch in the forests, 
And razed them for the shrines of the White Christ. 
Yea, I have chanted with the abbots in Appenzell. 

20 



In Britain and in Staffa have I builded sanctuaries; 
And have vanished with the Druids of Stonehenge 
And their beacon lights upon the Celtic hills. 

Amid far waters I planted the True Cross beneath 

the palm trees; 
And held the crucifix to the lips of Montezuma; 
By the long waves on a frozen shore 
I sought the liberty of God, singing His mercies. 
And now in these last days, 
Behold, I fling His banner to the stars, 
Giving glory unto the Highest, 
World without end! 



THE DEWDROP. 

THE cycle of the dewdrop and the cycle of the 
sea, 
The smallest and the greatest, 'tis a question 
of degree. 
'Tis the same within the ocean and the drop of 

water small; 
And the dweller in the dewdrop has felt and known 

it all- 
Yea, I, within my dewdrop, have felt and known 
it all ! 



21 



THE BUILDERS. 

"TT^ACH man's life 

-■— ' The outcome of his former living is." 
So taught the nation by the summer seas, 
Its mystic life philosophy a woof 
Of breath of God and creeping things of earth, 
Of dust and dross and gleaming threads of gold. 

The Brahmin, musing with his eyes downcast 

Upon the marvel of the many lives, 

Saw in the crystal of the sunlit stream, 

Topaz and amethyst and lazuli, 

The shimmering fishes gliding to and fro, 

And cried, "Behold, in lowly forms like these 
Hath dwelt this human soul, ascending through 
Strange shapes of bird and beast, each leaving trace, 
While turns the ceaseless wheel. Lo, each man's life 
The outcome of his former living is!" 

Well hast thou seen, O seeker of the truth, 
Well hast thou said, O seer of things that are! 
From shape to shape through changes manifold 
Our endless lives roll on in linked chains 
Of deed and sequence, evil wrought and good; 
And what we shall be doth not yet appear. 

The deeds we wrought in all the vanished years; 
The thoughts we harbored as the moments sped; 
Things seen and heard and wondered at and felt; 

22 



Yea, all the life we lived from day to day, 
Have fashioned us as we behold ourselves. 

And still we grow and change, and build again 
New lives from embers of forgotten days 
That passing come no more; and each man's life 
The outcome of his former living is. 

INVICTUS. 

WHO sang "Invictus" loud and long — and fell — 
Doubt not thou sangest well! 
For there are those who had not known that song 
But for thy chanted word, 
Which they, despairing, heard 
And rose and triumphed; passing it along 
Wave after wave in ever-widening arc, 
Until the far reverberance of the strain 
Comes back to thee again 
Across the world; and mark, 
O thou of mighty will, 
Unconquered and unconquerable still, 
Above the flesh that fails 
The spirit still prevails, 

And 'tis thine own first song that lifteth thee 
To final victory! 
Early or late 
Thou rulest still thy fate, 
Despite all winds or tides through all eternity. 

23 



THE UNBELIEVERS. 

ONCE, in an age of magic, lived a man 
Who blew a bubble of his glowing breath, 
And dwelt therein. 
And when the walls were thin 
And straining as with coming death, 
And lights unutterable whirled and ran 
In flashing colors round the little span 

Of prisoned breath, from out his shining cloud 
He called to men aloud 
To share with him the radiance he had caught 
Circling about his thought. 

So frail a thing — a bubble — from without, 

That holds all life within! 
An alien touch, a carping word, a doubt, 

And all the crystalline 

Bright lights that whirl and spin 
About the central sun fire have gone out! 

So strange is human life, 

That holds each body central in a sphere 
Invisible, yet rife 

With every passion, prejudice and fear 
That in the heart may be! 

Long before men draw near 

Their subtle atmosphere 
Prepares the way for them, and rules what they 
shall see. 

24 



And so the unseeing crowd 
Slew, as they came, the bubble; laughing loud 
At what themselves had made vacuity! 



THE SYMPHONY. 

GOD, musing, made the law, His instrument, 
And set the wheels in motion with His word 
And law evolves the changing universe, 
Self-moving, self-adjusting, self-sustained. 

Law swerves not in its action, varying not 
One jot nor one iota in its course; 
It sets the whirling atoms in the deeps, 
Fashioned upon the pattern of the suns, 
And sows the empyrean with circling stars. 

From unplumbed systems in the atom's depths 
One method and one purpose govern all, 
To that immeasurable and ultimate Star 
Which is the sum of all the ordered spheres 
That move in music round the Throne of God. 

Wheel within wheel revolving ceaselessly 

The mighty system followeth the law, 

In one divine, unbroken harmony; 

One, in the atom's boundless depths revealed; 

One, in the framework of this earthly form; 

One, in the Star of Heaven immeasurable! 

25 



THE WORKERS. 

THE palace doors are closed upon the Mount, 
For none may view the King who rules supreme 
In wisdom, justice, mercy, and in power; 
Designing and directing from his throne, 
He wields unseen his sceptre over all. 

Far, far below the summit of the Mount 
The workers go their darkened way alone; 
Ten thousand times ten thousand toiling lives 
In one great image made and glorified, 
And shaped to working as the Master works. 

And instruments of marvelous design 
Are ready waiting for the eager hands 
Whereto they are adapted; yet few find, 
Groping in darkness of the twilight world, 
The instrument for which their hands were made. 

So to the carpenter there falls a sword; 
Unto the warrior a scrivener's reed; 
To him born tiller of the soil a loom. 
Unto the poet is a plowshare given, 
And to the brute dominion and a throne. 

But since a gleam of far celestial light 
Breaks through some crevice in the palace doors, 
The workers with their misfit instruments 
And alien tasks accomplish yet some work, 
Slowly and surely, — to their endless praise. 

26 



Yet some, grown bitter with their wasted strength, 
Seeing the mighty things they could have wrought 
Had there been no confusion of the tools, 
Cry, "Who is this who sits enthroned in light. 
Foiling his workers and his instruments?" 



THE PURPOSE. 

THEN spake One from His throne invisible 
Beyond the lightnings in the steadfast light: 
"Lo, who art thou, that I should mindful be 
Of thee, or any deed thou mayst perform? 
Need I thy help? Or in thy Babylon 
Soars any tower too near unto My throne? 

"Behold, I AM, and all that shall be, was! 
All thou wouldst make already hath been wrought, 
All thou wouldst do already hath been done. 
Know thou, O Man, My well beloved son, 
Who wast with Me when sang the morning stars 
And the foundations of the world were laid, 
Not as a builder have I sent thee forth, 
Nor as a laborer with implements, 
But as the king's son goes to win his sword; 
Achievement worthless but for battle fought 
And for the strength of obstacles o'ercome. 

"Lo! I have sent thee forth to overcome! 
From every evil wresting victory, 

27 



From every conquest greater in thy might. 

Up from the slimy ooze by slow ascent, 

Through all the cycles of the countless years, 

Thy vast dominion widens to the end, 

Yea, that far end when, conquering death and hell, 

I set thee at My right hand on the throne 

In judgment o'er the world that I have made!" 

"MAKER OF MEN" 

THE Kindler of the Fire- 
Doth He not know? 
He lights the pure flame; higher, ever higher. 

See, it will go! 
He smiles — it is enough; and in the mire 
All unrefreshed He leaves it to expire; 
Its worth is proved; 'tis all He doth desire! 
It hath no need to grow; 
Doth He not know? 

He lights the sullen spark 

And breathes it to a glow; 
He feeds it chaff and lightly kindling bark. 

And makes it grow 
Slowly, yea, inch by inch, until the dark 
About its soul is lighted; He will mark 
How it doth flicker, flare; His laughter hark! 

What care is needed, lo, 

Doth He not know? 



THE MEDIATORS. 

THOUGH He hath bidden to prayer in His word, 
So often had I prayed and He not heard, 
Being inscrutable and far away, 

And hidden by flaming swords from such as pray! 
And the great saints who touch His garment's hem, 
Surely earth's myriad prayers o'erburden them. 

So then I thought (perchance the thought were His, 

And this but one of many mysteries), 

Being beset with sharp and bitter need, 

I will invoke mine own to intercede. 

These I can reach; and, clothed in fire like Him, 

They may pass through the ranks of seraphim. 

Then called I, soul to soul, all those to me 

Bound by strong chains of love and sympathy 

And ties of kin that may not be denied. 

The long, long dead came swiftly to my side 

Across the gulf of the departed years, 

And those for whom mine eyes wept bitter tears. 

And from the knightly and the royal past 
Far shadowy kinsmen gathered round me fast; 
Yea, those of mine who had been strong to save. 
All came at call across the deathless grave 
In shapes of light, and bore beseeching word 
Up past God's flaming footstool, and H[e heard.! 



29 



THE CALL OF THE SIRE. 

LO! one arose, breaking earth's bondage — 
The law of the little children 
That held him safe to her bosom — 
And soared beyond her dominion 
In search of his father, the sun. 

But the great winds that follow earth's footsteps — 
The devils that trail her in fleeing — 
Shrieking and howling and hurling, 
Reached from the outermost darkness 
Their long arms to his undoing. 

They deafened him with their roarings; 

They blinded him with their blackness; 

They rended him with their clutches; 

And tossed him and whirled him and wheeled him, 

And tore him apart and asunder. 

So, cast in Osirian fragments 

Over the wind blown spaces, 

As meteors fall through the darkness 

His members fall, never reaching; 

But are caught back into the currents, 

And are whirled in the vortex forever. 

So I lay me down with my mother, 
Safe in the arms of her keeping, 
Wrapped in the robes that enfold her — 



30 



The crystalline robes of her being; 
And fanned by her gentle zephyrs 
Would sleep on her breast evermore. 

But there is no rest in my slumber 

Because of a voice that is calling: 

"Rise, thou, and seek the adventure! 

Perchance, though dismembered and shattered, 

Some fragment tossed out by the tempest 

Shall catch at the hands of the sun!" 

THE SONG MAKERS. 

SINGERS of earth, whose only gift is song. 
Sing when the night is dark and over-long, 
And by your music you shall make men strong! 

Though wastes and solitudes encompass you, 
Sing of brave deeds that keep the true men true, 
And of the laurel much shall be your due! 

The fires of God are nurtured in the dark 
And blown to flame from that undying spark 
That feeds the lyric of the unseen lark. 

Sing — as at dawn amid Jamaican hills 

Over far seas, the solitaire's sweet trills 

Break forth, and earth with flute-like music thrills; 

And even the great stars in the stooping skies 
Burn with a whiter splendor; while arise 
From mist-filled valleys notes of Paradise. 

31 



THE SPONGES. 

THESE are the Children of Ocean, the least of 
the great Sea People, 
Born in her strange wild currents and rocked in- 
her surging tides, 
Clinging to reef and coral and shaped to the form 
of their moorings; 
Blind in the dim green waters, they hide where the 
mollusk hides. 

Born of the Mother of all, with aeons of time yet 
before them, 
Naught they know of the sunlight — asleep 'neath 
her storms and calms; 
Soothed in the long, blind ages by the croon of her 
wistful murmurs, 
And shaped by her voice as the air shapes the 
fronds of the wind-blown palms. 

Who shall determine, O Man! the goal of thine in- 
finite reaching, 
Up from the lowest deeps where the uttermost 
life hath birth? 
Of fish and reptile and bird, of roaming Lord of the 
Forest — 
Rememberest aught in thy dreaming, O full-grown 
Child of the Earth? 



THE JUDGMENT OF THE DEAD. 

THE dead man stood before the shadowy throne 
Wherefrom the judgment of the dead is given, 
And waited sentence calmly, unafraid, 
Guiltless of evil deed in earthly life. 
When lo! from out the judgment book was read 
The doom of him who wasted, robbed, and slew! 

"Nay, Lord," cried he bewildered, "when did I 

These evil things whereof I am accused? 

Sore, sore have I been tempted, but withstood. 

From spoliation I withheld my hand, 

And slew not, though my heart was hot with hate. 

Riches have passed, and all that men desire 

I have put from me for a blameless life; 

And empty hands and broken heart attest 

That I have passed through life without its gains." 

Then spake in sorrow He who rules the dead: 

"The spirit judge I; not the flesh of man 

Which is subservient to the lord of life 

And of the earth, in whom I have no part. 

Lo! to the spirit what is its desire 

It makes thereby its own! Wherefore I say, 

Thou, who hast had so much in thy desire, 

And in desire hast done so many ills, 

Work out the punishment I mete to thee 

So that these things shall tempt thee not again." 



33 



INVOCATION. 

THEN cried I, "Lord, Thou Who hast bidden 
me pray, 
These many years have I by night and day 
Petitioned Thee, and yet no answer known! 
Art deaf or powerless on Thy distant throne?" 

Then spake a low voice present in mine ear: 
"Sayst that thou dost pray and I not hear, 
I, Who am nearer than thy hand is near? 
O thou, vociferous by night and day, 
Art sure thou knowest what it is to pray? 

"I heed not windy words nor foolish tears, 
And though thou seekest thus a thousand years, 
A thousand years thou shalt unanswered be; 
And yet I say, pray thou, and ceaselessly, 
And what thou prayest shall be given to thee! 

"Behold, I show thee a great mystery, 
Who looking in thy soul shall there find Me; 
Desire — with passion deeper than the sea; 
Believe — that I, thy God, will uphold thee; 
And in My name command — and it shall be! 

"It shall be thine to set the captive free; 

And thine to cast the mountain in the sea; 

And thine to wreak slow vengeance day by day 

Upon earth's mightiest, till, forlorn and gray, 

On desolate thrones all hope is washed away! 

34 



"The sword is thine, and thine the healing touch, 
O thou of strong desire, believing much! 
And yet, lest judgment on thine own head fall, 
Watch well thy prayer, for lo, I answer all!" 



THE ARTIST. 

AS 'mid far mountains lies some inland sea, 
Within whose depths their mirrored peaks are 
shown, 
So still and clear the artist's soul must be 
Amid the summits where it dwells alone. 

The gentlest zephyr frets the mirroring wave, 
The lightest discord mars the picture's worth. 

Forlorn his being whom the vision drave 
To be the loneliest creature upon earth! 



35 



A TWENTIETH CENTURY PRAYER. 

LO! Thou hast made Thy flaming suns 
And set them circling free in space; 
And Thou hast made those darker ones 

Outcast forever from Thy face, 
Those wandering stars with quenched spark, 
Lost in the blackness of the dark. 

O Maker of each undimmed sun 
In sole dominion o'er its spheres 

That in their rounded orbits run 
Serenely through the perfect years, 

Look down in pity on our world 

About two centres madly whirled. 

Our world with pathway all amiss, 

Misshapen by the central strife 
Between the lords of woe and bliss, 

Of dark and light, of death and life. 
Help us, in these our latter days, 
To search this darkness and its ways, 

To find the pivot of the night; 

And heal earth's guidance, rent in twain, 
That brings into a world of light 

Death and the evils in its train. 
In Thy deep wisdom let us trace 
This lost star hidden from Thy face. 



36 



Up from the primal fall Thou'st shown 
The way of life to mortal breath; 

To man's estate through leaf and stone, 
From change to change, we've fought with 
death; 

Grant, with Thy last great gift of mind, 

The prince of darkness we may bind! 

THE DELUGE. 

(After Washington Allston.) 

SHROUDED in driving clouds, by sun forgot, 
The darkened sky bends sullen o'er the wreck 
Of the great deep whose fountains are released; 
And gray lit waters burst against the gloom. 

The murky waves wash on the wasted shore, 
Strewn with wan corpses where the serpents glide; 
And round the last spar of earth's wreckage writhes 
A monstrous python, coiled in fold on fold. 

Dark birds are flying 'gainst the low hung clouds, 
Washed with the spray of the foundation seas; 
And lone upon a summit in the midst 
A stranded wolf howls o'er the desolate world. 

Water and fire shall devastate thee, earth, 
And the wild passions of man's untamed heart; 
Till, of the types to which thou hast given birth, 
All but the serpent and the wolf depart! 



37 



COLORS OF DARK. 

CLOSE thou thine eyes and see 
Deep in the deepest night, 
What royal colors be 

Wrought of the hidden light; 

As on some stagnant pool 
Leaf hidden from the sky, 

In shadow deep and cool 
Irradiant colors lie. 

Deeper than day is night, 
Deeper than life is death, 

Beyond all brightness bright 
Light which there entereth! 

The sunlight's brilliant beams 
Break in a thousand dyes, 

Where rainbows cast their gleams 
Of promise o'er the skies; 

But brighter than the sun 

In unseen light, I wis, 
Whose colors float upon 

The midnight's deep abyss. 

Close then thine eyes and see 
With thine own inward light 

What gorgeous colors be 
Blazoned upon the night! 



38 



CLOUD PICTURES. 

THE curtains of the quiet room 
Wave idly in the fitful breeze; 
Far off the city's mellowed hum 
Is murmurous as bees. 

Across the heavens' perfect blue 
By listless currents lightly blown, 

Soft clouds bring slowly into view 
The hosts of the unknown, 

The long-forgotten souls outcast, 
That yearn again for mortal birth; 

Earth spirits wandering from the past 
Back to their mother earth. 

Where'er the vague cloud-headlands rise, 
Wan spectres glide and fade again; 

And some have walked in Paradise, 
And some were yester slain. 

Earth calls, defying time and death, 
Her myriads to the haunts of day; 

And all that once drew mortal breath 
Still own her jealous sway. 



THE STONE THAT THE BUILDERS 
REJECTED. 

WISELY they toiled, the builders, fitting well 
The granite blocks of equal shape and size 
Cleft from one quarry, that to heaven should rise 
A matchless temple where their god might dwell, 
Worshipped above all gods of heaven or hell. 

And as they wrought in that long vanished day, 
Building with even blocks, a curious stone 
Come to their hands, for which no use was known; 
Not like the ones they used, nor shaped as they, 
Uncouth it seemed and so was flung away. 

No instrument had touched it; but from glow 
Of earth's primeval fires 'twas flaming cast; 
And cooling into rugged form at last 
'Twas washed by many waters to and fro, 
Shaped as the tide swings and the tempests blow. 

No human hands its symmetry had wrought; 
And they, earth blind, saw not how passing fair 
This corner stone unlike all others there! 
Saw not that all life's secrets it had caught, 
And typified the thing for which they sought. 

But when at length the pyramid had grown 
In terrace upon terrace to the sky, 



40 



Lo, naught could fill the summit's vacancy 
Till there they placed, majestic and alone, 
Head of the corner, the rejected stone! 



THE AUTUMN STAR. 

THE Autumn leaves turn brown and sere 
And drift to molder in the shade; 
Down by the river's brink a fear 
Creeps where the quivering rushes hear 
The footsteps of the passing year 
Go slowly through the glade. 

His pipes are silent; in despair 

Sits Pan amid the river reeds. 
The wind blows back his unkempt hair 
Across dank marshes, wild and bare; 
The naiad lurks no longer there, 

Nor faun his music heeds. 

Lift up thy head, god Pan, and see 
Among the stars in bright array, 

The nymphs that mortal vales must flee! 

The faun Capella beckons thee 

To notes of wilder ecstasy — 
Take up thy pipes and play! 



41 



DREAM. 

"The way to sleep is a sheer fall; only the long 
return slopes are dream haunted" 

BESIDE the creeping seas I lingered, lingered, 
Drowsed by the murmur of the lapping waves 
And by the sinuous shifting of the mists. 

Beside the abyss of sleep I lingered, lingered, 

Lingered — and fell! 

Swift as a plummet falls, my spirit dropped 

Down the sheer sea wall of the deeps of sleep, 

And swooned for unimaginable time 

In night of unimaginable dark. 

Then dawned a light that was not of the sun; 

And from the surface of a quiet stream 
That had been Time, but now had ceased to run, 

Like morning mists there rose the mists of dream. 

And step by step along the farther slopes 
That lead up to the living world again, 
I came companioned by the wraiths of men 

And by the spent winds of their fears and hopes. 

And, as one sees in crystalline deep tides, 

Through coral caves the strange bright fishes go 

Hither and thither as the current glides, 
Fantastic visions flitted to and fro. 



42 



Flitted, and came again. Gleams mistily- 
Foretold the coming day. A pebble fell 
And broke in shallow waves the lingering spell. 
I heard the lapping, lapping of the sea, 
And woke to earth's bright sunlight over me. 



CURRENCY 

Let us pay with our bodies for our souls' desire. 

— Theodore Roosevelt. 

OHIGH of soul, flesh doth not overwhelm, 
But is the means wherewith all things to buy! 
It is the coin current of the realm 
Wherein we live and die. 

Upon our far, strange journey to that home 

From which we are astray, 
The Providence that destined we should roam 

Gave us wherewith to pay. 

We shall arrive if nobly we aspire, 

And, spending flesh to buy the spirit free, 

Pay with our bodies for our souls' desire 
For perfect liberty. 



43 



w 



DIAMONDS. 
ROUGHT of the sunshine and the winds and 



rains, 

And seething forests of the young world's birth, 
The Chemist moulded in His Crucible 
The diamonds of earth. 

And on a night of uttermost deep dark, 
Wild with the dashing of the turbulent seas 
And the strange passions of the wind's desire, 
From His high place within the highest arc 
Of heaven, He cast the burning mysteries 
That are the diamonds' fire- 

They fell like star gleams on the riven crags 

Of earth, and in her valleys and her sea; 
And in the crevice where the torrent lags; 
And where the desert sands perpetually 
Blow to and fro; and where the eagle seeks 
His eyrie 'mid the summits of the peaks. 
And, buried in the underbrush and mould, 
The ancient forests still their strange fires hold. 

Few, few there were that flashing in the sun 
Fell on earth's thrones; but waiting age by age 
Still patient in the darkness of her mines, 
In the great blackness how their glory shines 
That are earth's heritage! 



44 



THE WINGED GLOBE. 

HIGH in the light, Libra, the Winged One, 
Guardeth the balance of the orbed scales 
That hold the sleeping serpent of the sun, 
Coiled in its seven veils. 

Nor wind nor any storm disturbs its rest, 

Poised in the shadow of the brooding wings 

That shield, as shields the mother on her breast, 
The child to whom she sings. 

Her singing is the music of the spheres 

Crooned as the current flows, now high, now low, 

And slumbrous as the cradle of the years 
She rocketh to and fro. 

Eternal Life is she — the parent pair 

And she the offspring — ever three in one; 

Wings of the Seraphim o'erspreading there 
The chrysalis of the Sun. 

And free beneath the eagle wings shall be 
The coming and the going of the years, 

That keep in rhythmic change the liberty 
And balance of the spheres. 



45 



THE ROAD TO YESTERDAY 

CLOSE by the path of every day 
The winding roadway lies; 
We breathe the incense of the dawn 

Beneath the solemn skies, 
And lo! cloud curtains lift and bring 
Old scenes before our eyes! 

A sound of bell on summer eve, 

A breath of violet's bloom, 
When touch of little clinging hand 

Comes with the faint perfume — 
And then the Road to Yesterday 

Breaks shining through the gloom! 

We catch a glimpse of snowy peaks 

Above a shadowed vale; 
Or down some mountain's sloping side 

There bloom the wild flowers pale, 
Or on the far horizon falls 

A light on sinking sail. 

Along the Road to Yesterday 

Lie palaces of light 
And windy caves in barren lands 

Whereof no man has sight. 
And strange moons round a stranger earth 

Draw wild tides in the night! 



46 



The road leads over sunken seas 

And stretch of desert sands; 
The stars of long past ages shine 

O'er wondrous twilight lands; 
And there are long forgotten friends 

Who once have clasped our hands! 

ORION. 

OUT of the ancient east he comes, 
The radiant hunter, clad in stars: 
Nor noise of war, nor beat of drums 
The deep supernal stillness mars. 
Above the shadow of his eyes 
A starry helmet circling lies. 

Infinite suns about him gleam; 

Bright Bellatrix, with warlike ray; 
And Betelgeuse, whose sullen beam 

Was crimsoned in aeonian fray; 
And Rigel, flashing at his feet 
In fierce, white lightning, young and fleet. 

Stars gem the bright sword at his side, 
Forged in the fire of seething suns; 

And round his strong loins, circling wide 
A starry girdle flaming runs; 

And leashed in silence, star with star, 

There follow him his dogs of war. 



47 



THE ROAD OF THE RETURNER. 

*r [MS a long road and a lone road, 

-*- And the returner passes 
Where snow and sleet cling to his feet 

And Winter wind harasses; 
And where the Summer sunshine burns 

The dead and dying grasses. 

Who would return, stems dark and stern, 

The current of life's river; 
The things he's learned he must unlearn 

And give back to the giver; 
And back and forth, 'twixt death and birth, 

Must go alone forever. 

'Tis a long road and a lone road, 

For no companion passes; 
And all the old remembered way 

Is lost in wild morasses 
Where pale lights lead the feet astray 

Amid the dank marsh gases. 

'Tis a long road and a lone road, 
And lights burn blue and quiver, 

Where rosy flame, the way he came, 
In vanished days shone ever. 

'Tis a long road and a lone road 
And a road that joyeth never. 



48 



GIVE. 

OF all thou holdest fast 
While the years roll 
There remains at the last 

Never a dole; 
All that thou givest thou hast, 
Give all, O my soul! 

Keep not in hoarded store 

Treasures of mind; 
Open each closed door, 

Fling wide each blind; 
Scatter like flame and more 

Like flame thou shalt find. 

Love fears not waste, nor theft, 

Nor time's recall; 
It leaves no place bereft 

Where it may fall. 
Give till no more is left, 

Thou who wouldst have all! 



49 



FROM THE EAST. 

WIND of the Sunrise Land! 
Waft to me, wandering 'neath these western 
skies, 
A little of thy balm — the peace that lies 
Where softly shifts the sand. 

Breathe faint across the years 
The fragrance of the spices, when the eves 
Were bathed in dew, and swooning lotus leaves 

Drooped with their weight of tears. 

What mysteries vague and grand 
Lie all forgotten where thy soft airs sleep! 
Into my heart the long past memories creep, 

Wind of the Sunrise Land! 

A little while the haze 
Seems lifted from the valleys; and the peaks 
Whisper together in a tongue that speaks 

Of long forgotten days. 

So sweet, so passing sweet, 
Thou wind of morn and spring! Remembrance 

grieves , 
And drifts of gold and crimson autumn leaves 

Lie gathered at my feet. 

Wind of the morning's breath! 
A moment, O a moment, let me feel 



50 



Thy magic 'mid the lotus leaves that heal, 
O wind, the wounds of death! 

Waft sweet dreams softly fanned 
Across the long day's journeying forlorn, 
To mine eve's twilight from my twilight morn, 

Wind of the Sunrise Land! 

INEFFACEABLE. 

ALL that hath been shall ever be, 
Nor any act or word be vain; 
Engraved on time indelibly 

And in the light all deeds remain; 
For though God hath dominion, He 
Cannot make void the past again. 

Reverse the whirling wheel of time, 
Retrace the pathway of the light, 

And in old India's sunny clime, 
Or ancient Egypt's darkest night, 

We hear the temple bells a-chime 
And see the altars burning bright. 

Upon the moving screen the flood 

Is still recorded fadelessly; 
And we may stand where Moses stood 

And vision of his Canaan see; 
Or in some rare exalted mood, 

May yet behold Gethsemane. 



51 



I 



REMEMBRANCE. 
N a far land, Beloved, a far land, 



A lake lay blue beneath the Egyptian skies, 
Where now beside the weary Raiyan sand 
Muellah's desert lies. 



In a far land and long forgotten day 

The valley caught the overflow of Nile; 

And I, who loved its lights and shadows, may 
The mirage see a while. 

Limpid and cool, the dewdrops of the morn 
Lie quivering on the violets; row on row, 

Swayed by the whispering zephyrs of the dawn, 
The brooding rushes grow. 

Wide fields of violets border all its ways 
With azure blooms in odorous shadows deep. 

The mist above the waters and the haze 
I see again, and sleep. 

The mist above the waters — one lone call 
Of waking bird — the scent of violets — 

And I who dream have once again known all 
The weary earth forgets! 



52 



SAHARA. 

MY life is like the hidden stream 
That flows beneath the desert sands, 
Whose sluggish memory holds a gleam 
Of long past sunny lands. 

Across the waste the camels glide, 
The sands of centuries drift and blow; 

And thrones are dust that rose in pride, 
While I sleep on below. 

O lands so fair! O sunny days! 

Have ye forever vanished hence? 
My soul flows on in deep amaze, 

It knows not where or whence! 

A million eons yet my stay 

Beneath the desert sands may mark. 

The memory of a single day 
Will lead me through the dark. 

ALL AWRY. 

"T^OST thou exact day labor, light denied?" 
J— J One asked in woe. No answer came; but, 
hark, 
A low and bitter murmur at his side, 
"Mine eyes are open, brother, in the dark!" 



53 



TO THE MUMMY OF A KING WHO WAS 
SLAIN. 

OTHOU who knowest both love and hate, 
Pharaoh, 
Rememberest when in royal state 
Upon the goddess thou didst wait, 
The priestess at the temple's gate? 

The sun shone bright on cloth of gold, 

Pharaoh; 
And she was fair that would behold 
The world without the temple's fold; 
And thou wert high and thou wert bold, 

Pharaoh. 

Rememberest in this dim alcove 
How soft the blue skies bent above 
The roses in the temple's grove? 
How long is hate, how brief is love, 
Pharaoh! 

The leopard's skin gave leopard's sight, 

Pharaoh, 
Unto the priest who, robed in white, 
Before the altar day and night 
Guarded the mysteries and the light. 



54 



And thou whose glance was stern and high, 
How was it when thou earnest to die? 
Did the lone night wind hear a cry? 
Went there a leopard swiftly by, 
Pharaoh, Pharaoh? 



THE FADELESS VISION. 

THOU Autumn leaf, that as a dolphin dies, 
In all the gorgeous hues of sunset skies, 
I will preserve thee in some favorite book, 
Between whose well-loved pages I may look 
Often upon thy beauty, as today! 

Spake then, within, the Seer's voice: "Nay, 
Thou hast the deathless vision, go thy way, 
And leave the fading shape to life's decay, 
Which in its passing passion thou hast seen. 
Gold is the leaf which yesterday was green, 
And which tomorrow is but dust, and gray. 
The vision is eternal; that which made 
The vision is illusion, and must fade. 
All things perceived that perish as time rolls 
Leave their eternal imprint on our souls; 
So, grown a part of that which may not die, 
Pass with us into immortality." 



55 



THOTHMES THE THIRD. 

OUT from the past thou hast looked for a space, 
While the New World gazed on thine Old 
World face, 
In the pride of its power and its dust of disgrace, 
Thothmes! 

Out from the past but a single hour, 
Thy blind eyes glance in their old time power; 
The eyes of the living behold them and cower, 
Thothmes! 

And into the night of the ages gone 
Thou fallest again with the touch of morn, 
Thy dust to the dust from which it was born, 
Thothmes! 

Thy dust to the dust of the centuries there — 
The sands and the centuries, wide and bare, 
That gather and drift in the death still air, 
Thothmes! 

Over the desert rise scattered and lone 
The obelisks, writ with the deeds thou hast done. 
The sun rays fall on the rays of stone, 
Thothmes! 

From the twilight eves to the far sunrise 
Mutely they pray to the pitiless skies, 
In the graven record that time defies, 
Thothmes! 

56 



"Lo, the battles fought and the victories won! 
Behold, great Ra, the works I have done, 
And cherish and honor thy glorious son, 
Thothmes!" 

Between the banks of the drifting sand 
The river sleeps in that twilight land, 
By the stars of eternity solemnly spanned, 
Thothmes! 

Faded and gray are the flowers that arrayed 
The cerements royal in which thou wast laid — 
Rudely disordered and dim and decayed, 
Thothmes! 

And a wasp interred 'mid the rare perfume 
Of the myrrh and spices that graced thy tomb, 
Outlasts thy state and thy crumbling doom, 
Thothmes, Thothmes! 



57 



THE SOWER OF LIFE. 

THERE goeth a sower forth to sow, 
With both hands flinging the fertile seed 
Wherever his wandering footsteps go, 
By hill or valley, by river or mead. 

Little he recks where the good seed fall, 
Little he cares that they live or die; 

And some bloom out by the garden wall, 
And some in the ditches rotting lie. 

And some on the mountain top are cast 
Wide to the skies where the wild winds blow; 

And some are caught in the burning blast; 
And seaward some on the great waves go. 

Little he recks and little he cares, 
The heedless sower by sea and land, 

For the wasted seed that are choked with tares, 
Or the barren seed in the desert sand; 

For the drowned out seed in the ocean tide 
That sink to the boundless deeps below, 

Or with the drifting flotsam ride 
Listlessly ever to and fro. 

Lord of the vineyard and the rose, 

Gardener, take a little heed 
Of thy careless servant, the sower, that goes 

Wasting forever the precious seed! 

58 



EARTH MUSIC 

THERE are Earth melodies akin to those 
Celestial anthems sung 
When John on Patmos Isle was lifted up 
The angelic hosts among: 

The murmur of the illimitable sea 

That breaks along the shore, 
The while beneath the moon the slow tides ebb 

And flow forevermore; 

The sound at noontide heard in quiet nook 

Amid the city's strife, 
Of that deep rhythmic monotone which tells 

Of surging human life; 

The pulsing of the wild blood in our veins 

As round our hearts it swings; 
And rune of wires whose viewless currents beat 

Their vast imprisoned wings! 

All these are chorals of Eternal Life 

Whose glory all worlds sing, 
Orb within orb, from inmost cycles here 

To Heaven's outmost ring. 



59 



THE BIG TREE OF CALIFORNIA. 

I AM that tree, millenium old, 
Around whose heart recording rolled 
The circling years, like sea waves graven, 
That laid the centuries fold on fold. 

An unknown world of land and sea 
Slept at my feet; and over me 
The wise skies whispered of the wonders 
That had been, and that were to be. 

The thousand years of night did seem 
To shroud the moon and starlight's gleam; 
And in the dark the strange, wild nations 
Passed on as shadows in a dream. 

Across the world old empires fell; 

A heaven was peopled; and a hell 

Filled to the brim with souls that struggled, 

And won a losing game too well! 

Then on these western shores the sun 
Rose as the circling planet spun. 
And lo! while in the dark I'd slumbered, 
The cycle of a world had run! 

The new earth smiles; and murmuring waves 
That babble over old, old graves, 



60 



Laugh in the sunlight; while the ocean 
The long-drawn coast line laps and laves. 

The stern sea-coast from pole to pole, 
Still holds the waters in control; 
But sunlit skies look far and whisper — 
"Oblivion's waves again shall roll!" 



AT AMIENS. 

COMES to my mind forevermore a vision 
Far over land and sea, 
Of troops that to encampment are returning 
After a victory. 

Back to the city, back to Amiens slowly, 

In broken files they creep; 
Tis midnight, and the darkness is upon them, 

And weariness and sleep. 

They clutch the backs of heavy laden wagons 

Filled with a ghastly load, 
Whose creaking wheels, slow turning, help their 
lagging 

Footsteps along the road. 

Too weak the horses, led by stumbling masters, 

To bear them any more; 
And slowly shuffling, drunk with sleep, and bleeding, 

Returns the conqueror. 



61 



IMMANUEL. 

STILL art Thou with me! White clouds of the 
noon-day 
Reveal Thy presence moving on before; 
The stars of night, Thy fiery pillar guiding, 
Still lead me as Thine Israel of yore. 

I hear Thee in the wind's breath lightly moving 
The blades of grass, the leaf upon the tree; 

Behold Thee in the sunset and the dawning; 
The trembling shafts of sunrise show mc Thee. 

From soaring heights I see Thy vast horizon 
Sink slowly, slowly; circling in repose 

The nearer plains, the far supernal mountains, 
And that great mystery of the sea that goes 

In slow tide waves about the world forever, 

Obedient to Thy will unrestingly! 
I hear Thee in the murmurs of the forest, 

And lie within its shadow feeling Thee! 

Lo! Thou hast guided me and strength hast given, 
And courage, yea, and faith by night and day; 

And now the long, long journey nearly ended, 
Uphold me that I faint not by the way! 

Still art Thou near! The silver trumpets blowing 

Amid the wilderness at eventide 
Summon Thine Israel to the night's encampment; 

Lord, in Thy tarrying presence I abide! 

62 



THE GIFT. 

SAITH God to men; "Ye may- 
Have what ye will, but pay!" 
So paying its full worth 
Man has possessed the earth: 
Wealth bought by labor's stress; 
Fame paid in happiness; 
Knowledge acquired with ruth; 
Wisdom exchanged for youth. 

One thing we may not buy! 
We know not when nor why, 
But falling from above 
About us, cometh love. 
It stealeth in the heart, 
A mystery apart, 
And may not purchased be; 
Tis God's gift utterly! 



63 



LOYALTY. 

il A H, tempt me not! Old friends are all I need, 

-*— *■ I care not for the new and the untried; 
Old voices, only, speak in harmony, 

And unfilled be the place of those that died. 
I go companioned by my memory; 

Within my house of life the vacant walls 
Whence one by one old portraits fall and lie 
Crumbling to dust, attest my loyalty, 

And emptiness the vanished past recalls." 

Nay, hang new portraits where the dust is rife 
About thy vanished dead; thy house of life 
Needs all that love can give to beautify, 
And hold thee loyal still to those that die. 
Thou mayst not stay thy dead; the vacant space 
People with life and love, lest devils replace. 

Oh, deem not those unchanged that pass away 
To life's green fields beyond this twilight gray 
Where thou with thy remembrances dost tread — 
They change, as all life must, thy deathless dead! 
Then cease thy strife the tide of life to stem, 
And change with grace so thou companion them. 

Let the new faces gather at thy board, 
And in new chalices old wine be poured; 
Let other voices echo vanished strains 
In whose new harmony old love remains; 
And know the perfume passing from the rose 
Abideth still in every bud that blows! 
64 



DROPPING THE BURDEN. 

WE grow so weary of our human work, 
The day long labor and the many deeds 
Our hands have wrought; 
We grow so weary of the cares that irk 

Our restless brains, our bodies and their needs, 
So weary of our thought! 

Even as mill children sleep not at the mill 
Where all day long they toil the hours away. 
When dark is on the deep 
And all the great wheels silent are and still, 
Like these mill children, Lord, at close of day 
We would go home to sleep; 

Where nothing of our handiwork appears 
And all surroundings shall be wholly Thine: 
Thy boundless sky, 
Unchanged through the illimitable years, 

Thine untracked winds, Thy stars of fire divine, 
Thy deep eternity! 



65 



FORWARD. 

AFTER the battle patching up and healing 
Go the great surgeons, making men again 
Out of the fragments left by shell's explosion, 
Out of the remnants left by shrapnel's rain; 

Adjusting here a limb and there an organ, 

New skin, new members, coaxing flickering 
breath; 

Renewing men, and to the reeking trenches 
Sending them back to be the sport of death. 

O Great Physician, healing all earth's wounded, 
After life's battle bringing balm for pain, 

Out from these bodies all outworn and broken 
Let us go forth and come not back again! 

The fight is fought, and won or lost the battle, 
Let not our mortal injuries be healed; 

Let us go forward in time's marching order 
And fight the fight on some untrodden field! 



RAINY DAY IN THE PARK. 

ALONG the winding pathways lie 
Gray pools of water in between 
The pebbles, where the glint of sky 
Reflected gray is seen. 

And where about the ponds the sedge, 
O'erladen, droops its heavy head, 

The dull drops fall upon the edge 
Of melting ice like lead. 

Deep in the withered grass is heard 
A rain bound cricket's cheerless cry; 

And note of some far homing bird, 
Beneath the desolate sky. 



TO AN IDLER. 

TF Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands 

to do, 
How busily your hands to fill he's kept supplying 

you! 
And if, forsooth, 'tis idleness we find the mischief in, 
Why he is busier than you and guilty of less sin! 



67 



THE NOON HOUR AT ST. PAUL'S. 

OUTSIDE in the noisy street 
Come and go the hurrying feet; 
But within the quiet churchyard 
Noonday rest is passing sweet. 

Here the sparrows chirp and peep 
In the grass, and blossoms creep, 
Nodding in the wind and sunshine, 
Where the granite headstones sleep. 

For a century have I 
Lain here where the gravestones lie 
Lichen-covered, old and gray, 
Carved with names that fade away. 

Green the trailing ivy swings 
On the church wall where it clings; 
And beyond the turf and grass 
I can see the white clouds pass. 

I can see the heaven's blue 
And the glory shining through; 
And on spire and vine and wall 
The sunlight and the shadow fall. 

Silent, passive, year by year, 
These things watch I, lying here; 
Waiting in a dream of peace 
Till the long hours bring surcease. 



6cS 



Ye who come at noon to test, 
Come with welcome as a guest; 
But I pray you in your kindness 
Heed the turf above my breast; 
Tread not o'er me where I lie 
With face upturned to the sky. 



A POET PASSES. 
(Richard Watson Gilder) 

,{ 'T^HE Dream goes with the Dreamer." Nay, 

-*■ not so. 

Passes the Rose when mortal vision dies? 
Shall we decree no tender breezes blow 

Beneath wide alien skies, 
Because none feels their lingering caress? 

The whispering music is but breathed in vain, 
With no wind-harp within the wilderness 

To catch the wild sweet strain. 

O Poet, O Interpreter, the dream 

Remains with us who may not understand! 
Across vast spaces may some radiant gleam 

Reach us from that far land 
Where thou hast gone, and make the darkness glow 

That we may follow where thy feet have led! 
"The Dream goes with the Dreamer"? Nay, not so; 

The Dream is with us, uninterpreted. 



JOHN-A-DREAMS. 

OH, in the park walked John-a-dreams 
With slow and measured tread; 
The weary park, where round and round 

The winding pathways led. 
The sky was shadowy with cloud 

And the crescent moon had fled, 
And outside in the blazing streets 
The lights burned green and red. 

Outside along the blazing streets 

The lights burned gold and blue, 
And winked and glowed and flashed and reeled 

As drunken lights might do, 
The hundred thousand garish lights 

That night and Broadway strew; 
And in the park walked John-a-dreams 

Where the grass was wet with dew. 

All night within the park he paced 

The paths that nowhere led; 
And at the dawning came a voice 

From the far white stars o'erhead: 
"Whence comest thou, O John-a-dreams, 

That passest with the dead?" 
"I come from going to and fro 

And up and down," he said, 
"Upon thine earth, Lord God, whereon 

I sold my soul for bread." 

70 



THE ALGAE IN BRONX PARK. 

SLOWLY the fleecelike clouds drift by, 
Lightly blown by the listless breeze, 
In the infinite arch of the azure sky 
That bends to the brooding hemlock trees. 

Measureless life in the sky beyond; 

And under the arch of the matchless blue, 
Measureless life in the marshy pond 

Where the spirogyra hides from view. 

Here where the dying summer grieves 
In the twilight eves of the year forlorn, 

Under the pall of the drifted leaves 
In the slimy ooze is the algae born. 

Infinite life in the blue beyond, 

Where the fields of the nebulae strew the sky; 
And infinite life in the marshy pond 

Where the old drowned leaves of the summer lie! 

From the outer deeps where the worlds are born 
To the inner deeps of the algae's cell, 

Life calls to life in its primal morn, 
And God makes answer, "All is well!" 



71 



THE VANISHED EARTH GODS. 

THERE are no gods to hear us; 
He hath taken our gods away — 
The Princes of Air who hearkened our prayer — 
And we have forgotten to pray. 

The children scoff in the highways 

And use His name for a jest; 
And the high priests laugh and chatter and quaff, 

And rule their lives like the rest. 

He is not like us — He hears not, 

Nor heedeth our uttered plea; 
But the gods of the earth as mortals had birth, 

And they were fashioned as we. 

The god of the rains and the rivers 
Was strong, and we served him aghast; 

And we hushed our breath with the fear of death 
When the lord of the night wind passed. 

Messengers they, not judges, 

Nor measured the right and wrong; 
But they heard our pleas in the winds and the seas, 

And were swift to answer and strong. 

Or that our prayers were righteous, 
Or that our prayers were amiss, 



72 



Little they'd care, the spirits of air, 
They answered, and judgment was His! 

Still is He far beyond us, 

Master and spirit of light; 
And they who were near and fashioned to hear 

Are gone, and now it is night! 



THE SHADOW. 

TRAILED by the clinging shade it flees and fears, 
Which mocks in shape each changing form and 
face, 
Up from the dark through all the creeping years 

Life climbs earth's summits to the highest place; 
And there, as in God's image man appears, 
The glory sweeps his shadow into space. 

O Death, intangible and dread of name, 

Deepening in darkness as life's blaze grew bright 

Along the rugged pathway that we came, 

We know thee now our shadow in the light, 

Cast by the whiteness of God's Sirian flame 
On some far planet shining in the night! 



73 



IN CITY HALL PARK. 

HE stands, a simple soldier, there, 
Who deemed one life too small a fee 
For him to give in that great strife 
That made his country free. 

And it is free! High o'er the din 

And turmoil of the city's ways, 
Lo! Justice holds her sword and scales 

Above the land she sways. 

The commerce of a giant world 

Moves at his feet. Within his reach 

The tongues of nations meet; the air 
Is vibrant with their speech. 

He sees where science delves and wrests 
The rock ribs of the earth apart, 

And fills, with teeming floods of life, 
The arteries of her heart. 

In sober garb and quiet mien 

He stands; from out the western skies, 
Athwart the calmness of his face, 

The peaceful sunshine lies. 

And while our land endures to reap 
His sowing, memory shall not fail 

Of him who died that she might live, — 
The patriot, Nathan Hale! 



74 



THE DARK. 

OH, blest is man who in these latter days 
Hath been permitted by the gods to raise 
Earth's ancient curtain of the dark, that blight 
That fell like pestilence with every night! 

Then in the deep pit of the moonless sky 
Only the frightened stars went hurrying by 
Above earth's midnight forests; and dark seas 
Drew from the shrouding night their mysteries. 

And rivers rolled in darkness, and lone heights 
Lifted vain summits in the levelling nights 
That wiped out inequalities of earth 
As in reft hearts death leaveth level dearth. 

So all these dark things in the darkness seemed 
To be to earth as dreams which she had dreamed 
In night time; while there stalked with blazing eyes 
The nightmare beasts for hungry sacrifice. 

Oh, blest is man who in these latter days 
Hath learned the curtain of the dark to raise! 
And may he learn, ere flits this human breath, 
To raise at last earth's darkest curtain, death! 



75 



THE WRECKER OF THE HOSPITAL. 

I HELPED to wreck the hospital 
Where crippled children lay, 
What time the building was condemned 

And the white cots moved away; 
And I learned that where the seer is 
The vision is alway. 

I do not know what life and death 

And sin and suffering mean; 
But this I know through things I've heard, 

And things mine eyes have seen, — 
Earth holds indelibly the trace 

Of all that once hath been. 

I helped to tear the building down 

That held in row on row 
The tiny cots; and here and there, 

Wherever I might go, 
I'd catch a glimpse of baby face, 

Or hear a weeping low. 

I do not know what others saw, 

Or others heard; but I, 
Perpetually amid the din, 

Heard some wee sufferer's cry; 
And sometimes flitting in the sun, 

A little shade passed by. 



76 



Sometimes I'd feel a gentle touch, 
Like rose leaves from the skies; 

And in quick vision fairy land 

And gleaming towers would rise, 

And breath of flowers, that gladdened through 
Some sweet soul's ministries. 

And once, amid a mighty crash 

That seemed to rend the deep, 
I heard a crooning lullaby, 

And great wings softly sweep; 
And then I knew that angels watch 

Where crippled children sleep. 

AT HALF MAST. 

EARTH lowers its standard to thy shadowy one, 
Conqueror of human breath, 
But till we see thy banners in the sun 
We yield no victory, Death! 

Lord of this world and of this human form 

Wherein our souls abide, 
Thou hast but quelled the tumult of the storm 

And stilled the surging tide. 

Lo! unto Caesar what was given in trust 

Is rendered up; in scorn 
Life passes from thy kingdom of the dust 

To wider empire born. 



77 



AT A WEST INDIAN OBSERVATORY. 

THEN stood I with the watcher of the south, 
Turning his glass upon the starry heavens 
Nightly above the tamarinds and palms; 
And saw the great suns flaming in the dark, 
With crimson, emerald and cerulean fires 
Blown by ethereal winds along the deep. 

* * * Beheld amid the whirling nebulae 
Of molten spheres in clouds of golden flame 
The planets shaping on the Potter's wheel; 
And clustered glory break in myriad stars, 
Like fiireflies glimmering in primeval dusk 
A-down the twilight of empyrean fields. 

* * * Beheld within the flying shaft of light 
Flung by the Centaur to the flaming Cross, 
Companion suns in one transcendent star, 
Bound each to each by law that breaks nor swerves, 
Burn through the night in azure, red and gold; 
And that bright pendent jewel of the Cross, 
That blazed upon God's bosom in the sky 

Ere yet the world was made, reveal in fire 
The ancient mystery of His trinity, 
Great Alpha, throned upon his triple spheres 
Above the darkness of the Deep Abyss. 

* * * So seeing, stood in awe; and knew it is 
The fool alone who in his heart hath said, 
"There is no God!" Behold, the heavens declare 
His glory, and the firmament shows forth 

His matchless handiwork! 
78 



THE MELTING POT. 

FLING them all in the melting pot, 
Native, and strange to these harboring shores, 
Where the scarlet fires are flaming hot 
And the noise of the conflagration roars. 

Foreigners, citizens, gather here, 

Drawn by the light and held in thrall; 

Moths that out of the darkness appear 
To answer headlong the fateful call. 

And some are lifted out of the ditch, 

And some are dragged from the hills of pride; 

The lowly and noble, poor and rich, 
Seething and bubbling side by side. 

And some bring thrift and brains and skill 
And cast them all in the common store; 

And some bring sloth and the sins that kill 
That into the fusing caldron pour. 

It levels them all like the leveller, death, 
That brings to one semblance all who live; 

And out of the furnace a common breath 
To each that riseth again doth give. 

Oh, well it is for the crawling beast 

That is graded up from the slime of the town; 
But alas, for the soaring dreams that have ceased 

In the generous soul that is melted down! 



79 



ON THE FACE OF THE WATERS. 

THE sunlight falls upon the lake 
Where grasses on the margin grow; 
And grasses in the wave below 
A green reflected jungle make. 

In light and shade the ripples run, 
Where branches overhanging lie 
Athwart the blue of mirrored sky, 

And fret the gold of mirrored sun. 

A bird of air hath perched at will, 

And swings where drooping branches lave: 
A mirrored bird within the wave 

Swings with its motion, or is still. 

It hath no will nor way alone, 

This image in the waters shown; 

But when the lengthening wavelets glide 

Softly upon the quiet tide, 

An indolent unrest they give 

That makes the image seem to live. 

Even so, I deem, is man a shade 
By spirit on the waters made, 
Illusion, under the control 
Of circumstances and his soul: 
His soul — the living bird o'erhead; 
The circumstances — ripples spread. 

80 



A FROSTED WINDOW. 

IT is free as the wind, the spirit, 
And it shapeth itself as it will; 
And here on the florist's window, 

When the night is frozen and still, 

It taketh strange forms of the forest, 

And jungle and stream and hill. 

Out of the viewless ether 

It gathereth mistily; 
Slowly shaping and forming 

In blossom and vine and tree, 
With a grace of unspeakable beauty, 

And free as the wind is free. 

It hath woven a crystalline jungle, 
Scintillant, frosty and white; 

Bamboo and palm and aloe 
Glitter in magical light, 

In an icy forest primeval 

Under the stars of the night. 



81 



SHAKESPEARE IN THE SPRING. 
(Born April 23, 1564.) 

CHILD of the young world in her gladsome 
spring, 
Thy spirit comes perennially to greet 
Her joyous wakening in the springtime sweet, 
And wander with her where the wild vines cling 
To bending trees above the murmuring 

Of running waters where the mosses creep. 

Nature is roused from her enchanted sleep 

And speaks once more through thy interpreting. 

O'er banks of bloom Sicilian zephyrs play; 

The wavelets break upon the Danish shore; 
In Arden's glades the happy lovers stray; 
And sweet the heather scents the English moor. 
O radiant Shakespeare, happiest born of earth, 
Thou comest anew with every springtime's birth' 

A CRIMSON FEATHER DUSTER. 

WHAT wind of destiny has blown thee, little 
feathered thing, 
Whose spirit from dim spheres unknown crosses 

my journeying? 
Thy soul upon its winged way has vanished like a 

gust; 
Thy gorgeous plumage yet doth stay, lightly to lift 
the dust! 



THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN IN CENTRAL 
PARK. 

U T KNOW a garden where the wild thyme grows," 
-*■ And marigolds are nodding to the bee — 

Where mignonette and rambling sweet-briar rose 
Mingle their fragrancy. 

Azure and gold, above the blossoms, gleam 
The fluttering butterflies; and, spirit-white, 

One flits apart where water-lilies dream 
In crystal shadowy light. 

The scarlet salvia clambers up the rocks 
In regiments, like red-coat grenadiers, 

Above the wallflowers and the lady-smocks, 
And blue-eyed widows' tears. 

And by the waters where the bulrush meets 
The emerald moss that on the margin lies, 

In slender grace the tall papyrus greets 
Its old Egyptian skies. 

Sweet whisper zephyrs through the trailing vines, 
Sweet is the music where the ripples run; 

And over all in softened splendor shines 
The everlasting sun. 



S3 



N 



AT NIGHTFALL. 

(In Shakespeare Garden.) 
IGHT falls within the Garden of the Heart 



With healing balm for every flower that blows, 
And from its dewy chalice doth impart 
New perfume to the rose. 

Deep in the shadowy dells the falling brook 
Drowses its murmur. Water-lilies cool 

Sleep on the placid wave; while from some nook 
A wood-rat seeks the pool, 

Startling the reeds above a sunken star 
It sets a-dancing in black depths profound; 

And through the low grass cometh from afar 
The cricket's chirping sound. 

The fragrance of all blooms is borne upon 
The rise and falling of the fitful breeze; 

And deep in golden blossoms of the sun 
Sleep the gold-banded bees. 

O magic Night, that holdest in thy embrace 
A rarer sweetness than is born of day, 

How gladly doth the eager earth her face 
Turn from the sun away! 



84 



THE SINGING ICE IN THE PARK. 

WHERE the heaving ice floe hovers 
Over the face of the lake, 
And is swayed and rayed and rifted 

By the winds that wild sport make, 
There comes, when the ice is lifted, 
Low music from every break. 

There comes a soft, sweet singing, 
As of birds in the winter wind, 

Of happy birds low singing 
In the bitter and biting wind; 

As the scintillant, crystalline edges 
Swing slowly, and shiver and grind. 

And there, in the wide still distance, 

With never a soul to see, 
With a sweet and low insistence 

The ice sings eerily 
The songs of the birds in the springtime. 

That nestle in field and tree. 



85 



THE SCOURGE OF GOD. 

OUT of the Dark came Attila, 
Yea, Attila the Hun, 
Between the east of the sunrise 
And the west of the setting sun. 

And he slew where the Roman legions 

Were feasting at their ease; 
And he slew where the land lay sunken 

In its lusts and its luxuries. 

For the earth had need of his coming 
Who was the Scourge of God — 

The dread and terrible coming 
Of the curse accursed of God! 

And after the hour of blackness 

Before the great sunrise, 
A new world turned from its weeping 

A shining face to the skies. 

O earth, once more in stupor 
Of wealth and ease and sin, 

Again the Scourge comes trampling 
To usher the new day in! 



AFTER SUNSET ON THE HUDSON. 

AGAINST the low light of the western sky, 
The Palisades in shadowy rank on rank, 
Like serried troops forever passing by, 
Stretch to the north along the river's bank. 

Above their summits storm clouds roll and run 
As wind blown banners flutter in the night, 

Sable and grim; through which the sunken sun 
Sends, Parthian-like, a flying shaft of light. 

And high in ambient air one gleaming star, 
Shot like an arrow from the slender bow 

Of crescent moon, speeds westward swift and far, 
Unto Amenti where the dead suns go. 

Forevermore the circling race must run, 
Forevermore be war of day and night, 

The victory of the shadow o'er the sun, 
The victory in the morning of the light. 

Be strong, O heart; be comforted, O world; 

Ye that may hold no one fair thing, alas! 
In God's great cycle even time is whirled, 

An<* it, like all things, cometh but to pass! 



87 



THE BIRDS OF BRYANT PARK. 

LIKE still drab leaves in the bleak drab trees, 
While the rain falls gray, falls gray, 
With your little heads tucked under furled wet 
wings, 
How passes the night away? 



Have you thoughts akin to human thoughts? 

Do you wake and list to the rain? 
Are you cold, and hungry, and weary, and faint, 

Till the daybreak comes again? 

Or slumber you deep to the darkness of earth 
With your spirits in uttermost light — 

O little Ba birds, of a Dream that had birth 
In the old Egyptian night? 

The lamps in the street, how they flicker and flare, 
By the wet winds washed and blown! 

O little drab leaves, are you dead up there 
Till the soul comes back to its own? 



AN INCIDENT IN FLANDERS. 

ALL day, through scream of shot and shell, 
Upon the Belgians fighting well 
The blazing summer sunshine fell. 

Slowly the sun sank, round and red, 
Its bloody light on blood pools shed 
Where lay the dying and the dead. 

Bravely the great king stood at bay, 
The foremost in the battle's fray, 
And thirsted at the close of day. 

Then, seeking water, his aides see, 
Tethered beneath a distant tree, 
A worn horse drinking eagerly; 

And deeming that no creature durst 
Drink while their monarch was athirst, 
They seized the pail. But — "Let it first 

"Finish its draught! Its suffering 
Perchance is greater; and then bring 
The drink to me!" So spake the King, 
Albert of Belgium. 



89 



IN A VACANT LOT. 

ALL overgrown with weeds and grass 
The open lot neglected lies, 
And o'er its wild blooms flit and pass 
Like spirits, white-winged butterflies. 

In heaps scrap-iron lies here, thrown 

From train sheds and old railway tracks, 

Its rusty red with grass o'ergrown 
And green weeds peeping through the cracks. 

And long discarded semaphores 

Eternal guardianship now keep, 
Where signal no more lifts nor lowers, 

And tie-vines round them curl and creep. 

Landward the listless Seabreeze blows, 
And sways a mimic forest made 

By tall weeds soaring rows on rows, 
With leafy vistas in their shade. 

And here, all through the Summer day, 

Free in their own wild habitat, 
Three little kittens leap and play 

About a happy mother cat, 

Who all unaided wins her food' 
Wherever she may seek and find, 

And bravely rears her little brood 
After the fashion of her kind. 



90 



Unhampered they by hope or fear, 
That comes not to the like of these, 

Who may not see across the year 
The snow fall on the Summer's trees! 



A CRY IN THE NIGHT. 

THOU Angel who "prevented the king's sin, 
And holp the little ant at entering in"; 
Who knowest no great in His domain, nor small, 
Seeing that in His hand He holdeth all, 
Great Angel, heed this little lost one's call! 

The cry of the despairing in the night, 
Hither and thither hurrying in affright; 
A homeless creature left to starve and die, 
It prays as men pray in their agony, 
For all our prayers are but a bitter cry. 

Thou Angel, flying from the starry skies 
To gather in thy hands the prayers that rise 
From least and greatest, bend a pitying ear 
Unto this least one in extremity, 
Lest any think there is no God to hear 
Nor any Judge to see! 



91 



MAMMY. 

(It has been proposed to erect in Washington a 
statue in memory of the old Southern negro 
Mammy.) 

DEAR brown hands that smoothed with care 
The tiny frocks and rumpled hair; 
That gathered scattered toys from where 
They were left strewn on floor and stair! 
{Swing lo<w, sweet chariot!} 

Dear homely face, so patient grown 

In furrows from the cares she'd known — 

The cares of others, not her own — 

While the long years had backward flown! 

Dear heart, so loyal, loving, true, 
To all the children as they grew 
From babyhood to youth, and knew 
Their infant world from Mammy's view! 

Her voice melodious, soft and low, 
Had caught the crooning ebb and flow 
Of wild sea currents as they go, 
'Neath wind and sunshine — wistful, slow. 

So quick to sympathize and teach — 
Wisdom, not knowledge, was her reach; 
Prompt to reward or punish each 
Good deed or error; quaint of speech! 



92 



Nature's own guiding rod she bore; 
And taught us all her race's lore 
Of truth and legend, and a store 
Of marvelous things undreamed before! 

Not hers to question things that be; 
Content to hold her life in fee, 
She had the simple faith to see 
The Wonder and the Mystery. 

(Swing low, sweet chariot, low, low!) 

TO AN ANCIENT SLEEPER. 

THE river winds like molten glass 
Amid the fields of waving grain, 
And Indian echoes haunt the plain 
Wrapped in the Indian summer haze; 
They whisper in the rustling maize, 
And speak from out this mound again. 

Thou, who art one with all that was 
And all that ever shall remain — 

Surely thou hearest through the grass 

Hither and thither my feet pass, 

Seeking the spot where thou hast lain 
These centuries of sun and rain! 

I may not see thy face, alas! 

But free earth touches grain to grain 
And links a current 'twixt us twain! 



.:,^ 



MEDUSAE. 

(The attraction of light in the spring brings up 
from the sea bottom hosts of medusae or jellyfish.) 

CALLETH the Light at wakening of the spring- 
time— 
"Arise! Arise! My children of the sea! 
Loosen your bondage to the ties that hold you, 
Break from the deep — arise, and come to me!" 

They come in hosts, the sea's bright-eyed medusae. 

Shy and young souled, by pulsing movements sped, 
Up from long arms and tentacles that hold them 

Among strange shapes upon the ocean's bed. 

High o'er the surface of the air's deep ocean, 

The Voice calls to us: "Ye who blindly seek 

Life which is light — come upward, O my children! 
Leave the earth bottom, where the highest peak 

"Pierces in vain the immeasurable waters, 
And never island from the wave breaks forth; 

Dim shapes ye move among, my sons and daughters, 
Come up to me and know the true life's worth. 

"Ye who have eyes, the time has come for seeing! 

Ye who have ears, the time has come to hear! 
Come from blind deeps and know the full of being, 

The rounded orb, the music of the sphere!" 



94 



Up from the deeps, advancing and receding 
By heart's diastole and systole — 

The Light that calls our seeking instinct leading- 
Do we go forth, we Children of the Sea! 



WOODLAWN. 

A FAIR, white city, o'er whose quiet streets 
Life everlasting broods! No jarring sound 
Mars its sweet restfulness and long repose. 
The Summer sun lies softly on its ways, 
Where flit white butterflies from bloom to bloom, 
And soft cicadas chant amid the trees. 

There is no evil there, nor sin, nor death; 
But lights and shadows of His perfect peace 
Who stoops and lays His benediction on 
The congregation gathered in His sight. 

Then falls the dew of evening on the grass, 
With odor of sweet flowers; and all night long 
The winds of Woodlawn whisper 'neath the stars 
The mysteries of the coming of the Dawn. 



95 



"0 



FROM THE TALMUD. 

NLY the grave dust covering it at last 
Man's eye can satisfy!" So saith the Word. 



When Alexander, conqueror of the earth, 
Approached the gates of Paradise and knocked, 
The Guardian Angel, with uplifted brows 
And glance unrecognizing, questioned him, 

"Who knocks?" To which the king responded high, 

"I, Alexander, chiefest of the world!" 
Whereat the Angel slowly smiled and said, 

"We know him not. This portal is the Lord's; 
Only the righteous enter here. Depart!" 
Then Alexander all abashed, replied: 

"Give me, I pray, a token showing men 
That I have reached the gates of Paradise, 
Though may not enter!" So the Angel gave 
A tiny bone, the fragment of a skull. 
Then Alexander went back whence he came 
And showed it to the wise men of his realm, 
Who, weighing it, discovered all the gold 
And silver heaped upon the other scale, 
His costly jewels, ay, his diadem 
That Alexander placed were but as air 
To the small fragment of a human skull. 
This bone about the eye! Thereat a sage 
Esteemed the wisest gathered at the throne, 



Stooped to the earth and laid a grain of sand 
Upon the bone; and lo, the scale flew up! 

'Only the grave dust covering it at last 
Man's eye can satisfy!" So saith the Word. 



FAITH. 

THE night is dark and wild! 
O soul of my little child, 
My little baby child, 

Stay — stay ! 
Thou little helpless one, 
Out in the great unknown 
How canst thou find alone 
The way? 

But the voice of the little soul, 
The sweet voiced little soul, 
Back through the silence stole 

To say, 
"O mother of mine, alone 
I came from the great unknown; 
Came I not unto mine own 

Straightway?" 



97 



THE WATCHER AT THE GATES. 



"\TAY," sai( 
-A- ^ To ente: 



said the Angel, "Thou art all unfit 
To enter here, who lovedst not thy race 
While yet on earth; how canst thou then expect 
To share their joys in Paradise, and kneel 
With them, as worshipper before the Throne? 
The bowers of Eden bloom for all alike 
Who enter in; wouldst thou a special place 
To draw thyself apart and dwell alone ? 
Here music is the music of all tongues 
In harmony, and every heart akin! 
What wouldst thou in thy loneliness and pride?" 

Thereat the Soul made answer, speaking low 
In humbleness: "Dread Lord of Paradise! 
I was a stranger to thy flocks and herds, 
I was a wild thing tamed not to their ways, 
Nor grown unto their liking; so I kept 
My soul apart, and made myself a path, 
And lived my life as creatures of the wood, 
None harming, passing onward, but alone; 
Freed from the bitterness of hateful strife 
Through mingling with Thy creatures not akin. 

"I seek not joys within the City Gates 
Celestial, where the alien saints abide; 
But grant, I pray Thee, some green slope low down 



Upon the outer hills of Paradise, 

Before the massive portals, where I may 

Watch for the little creatures of the earth 

Up drifting from the mists; and ope for them 

A crevice in the portals else dnswung, 

And let them in to rest beneath the trees 

And by still waters in the pastures green. 

"So may I yet be minister to them — 

The little waifs and stray souls of the earth, 

The piteous younger brethren of the fold!" 



AT THE WINTER SOLSTICE. 

FROM whirling strife at center there is peace, 
Where dawns with thee first life, O Mother Sea! 
The far-spread system of our changing worlds 
Wheels round Alcyone. 

A moment's pause there lingers at the goal 
The age-worn sun in ashes of desire; 

Then round again the flying seasons roll 
With a diviner fire. 

Serene the tide at meeting of the ways 

Where new life pauses for the old to cease; 

And there, within the happy halcyon days, 
Was born the Prince of Peace! 



99 



ON THE HOUSETOP. 

SERENE at sunset on the roof 
I watch the daylight passing by; 
The cares of earth have sunk abashed 
Beneath the perfect sky. 

All sounds have mingled into one 

Deep rhythmic murmur, far, subdued, 

As if the city's pulsing heart 
Beat in the solitude. 

Beyond the level roofs a sail 
Creeps slowly over sunset seas; 

A mist is on the evening hills, 
And night amid the trees. 

Far overhead a homing bird 

Flies dark against the changing sky, 
Now lost in cloud, now plunged in fire 

Where lakes of sunlight lie. 

Half shrouded in the harbor mists 

Earth lights come twinkling into view; 

As one by one majestic stars 
The fields of heaven strew. 



100 



A PEARL OF THE FAITH. 

After a conflagration in which three firemen lost 
their lives three goldfish were found unharmed in 
the ruins. 

"Praise Him, Al-Mutahali! whose decree 
Is wiser than the wit of man can see!" 

HE is the Reckoner, and He counteth all 
His'creatures, be they great or be they small; 
He balanceth and weigheth, counting all. 

When, in that seething pit, He, ruling Death, 
Let three men perish in its flaming breath — 
Three valiant men — He, ruling Life and Death, 

Kept all unharmed beneath the cindered mass, 

Three tiny goldfish in a globe of glass, 

That lived and frolicked 'neath the cindered mass. 

Lo! He doth see, Almighty and All-wise, 
That which is hidden from our wondering eyes — 
Why these should live, those perish — O All-wise! 



101 



EVENING AT CAMP MILLS. 

THEN, when the day was ended, I came home. 
Leaving the pageant to the sunset faded, 
And camp fires kindling in the growing dusk. 
The pungent wood smoke blew across the field, 
And curling gray wreaths veiled the evening star, 
High sentinel — lone in the amber sky. 

Lingering, I heard a far off bugle call 
And sound of music wafted on the breeze, 
And cheerful voices by the clustered tents 
Where soldiers spoke and jested comradewise, 
Partaking of the fragrant evening meal. 

In rows on rows the canvas dwellings lay 

Beneath the vaster canopy of sky, 
Where down long lanes the far tents fade away, 

Lost in the hovering darkness utterly. 
Brood of the Eagle! Summoned loud and clear, 
From every eyrie are ye gathered here 
On this far island by the eastern shore; 
From the sad South I shall behold no more 
In all the changing glory of the year; 
And from the marvelous city lying near; 

And from the West, beyond whose mountain chains 
In majesty the great Pacific reigns, 



102 



Holding for man unborn its priceless boort, 
With golden gates flung to the sunset widel 
And from the Great Lakes with their ocean tide 

Rising and falling 'neath the swinging moon, 
Whose changeless changes evermore abide. 

A night ye rest, O children of the Sun, 

Benea,th the shadow of His brooding wings! 

And with the new light of the day begun 
Ye shall go forth as conquerors and kings — 

Yea, as the sons of God, go forth to war! 

And would to Him that I were where ye are! 



OLD YOUTH. 

YOUTH, that was first of all, 
Oldest it is of all, 
Back of the elements, winds and the tides. 

Age, that is last of all, 
Youngest it is of all, 
Younger and younger the longer it bides. 



103 



HORSES. 

IN the gray shades where horses' spirits go 
They spoke together after mortal woe. 
Said one: "I came from where a boundless plain 
Swept the horizon, by wild armies slain; 
Shot full of arrows, as the red sun fell 
My last shriek mingled with the savage yell." 

Another spoke: "I came from tossing seas 
Where, herded in dense masses, knees to knees, 
A troop ship bore us to a mighty war. 
Over wide waters, speeding fast and far, 
Doom came to us. Upon the ocean's floor 
Amid old wrecks our bones lie evermore." 

And then a quiet voice, subdued and sad, 
Spoke slowly: "All the wasted strength I had 
Was spent in the long service of the street. 
Day after day I lifted weary feet, 
Slipping and falling; on an icy dawn 
I left at last the wagon I had drawn." 



104 



THE UNEXPECTED. 

ONE mocked at death, for being strong of limb 
And fearless, death no terrors had for him: 
"From out my course I shall not move a jot, 
Let him approach at will; I fear him not!" 

Yet, when the conqueror whom he thought to meet 
As man meets man, erect upon his feet, 
Came creeping in long twilight shadows, he 
Fell on his knees and writhed in agony. 

Another, not self-confident but frail, 

Feared death from his youth upward; e'en would 

quail 
At every shadow which upon his path 
Seemed pointing toward him in its sombre wrath. 

Yet, when death came, not wrapped in lengthened 

gloom 
As all life long this man expected doom, 
But sudden in the sunlight, not a trace 
Of fear remained; he met him face to face. 



105 



THE LAST SEAL. 

YOU have covered the sea with your navies; 
You have mined the solid earth; 
You "have used the fire for your desire 
And given great engines birth. 

But for ages the air has tempted — 

Has mocked and laughed to scorn; 
Since the old scheme of Da Vinci's dream, 

And the hopes of the young world's dawn. 

Now the trumpet sounds the breaking 

Of another seal, O man! 
For your hands have wrought the thing you've 
sought 

Since first the world began. 

You have knocked — and to you 'tis open; 

You have sought and it is found; 
You have burst all ties in your will to rise, 

O scorner of the ground! 

And the earth shall signal greeting, 

To the commerce of the sky — 
As with flags unfurled above the world 

The ships of air shall fly. 



106 



THE ARCHETYPE. 

IN desert places and in fields and woods, 
Chameleons take the hues of rocks and trees; 
And sponges to their moorings shape themselves 
In the slow swinging of the languid seas. 

The waves assume the colors of the sky, 
Rosy at dawning and at close of day; 

Ethereal blue beneath the arch of noon; 

Black with the midnight; with the storm cloud, 
gray. 

And standing in the Presence on the mount, 
Upon whose peak the flaming angels trod, 

Lo! gazing on the Light unspeakable, 

The prophet's face gave glory back to God! 

So, growing like to what we look upon, 
Let us seek beauty wheresoe'er it lies; 

And let our casements to the hills be flung 
And to the wide seas and unfathomed skies; 

That, looking out, our souls become more vast; 

And, looking up, our spirits grow more rare; 
And with our minds intent forever on 

The fair in nature we grow also fair. 



107 



AT A MENAGERIE. 

HELD as prisoners in a cage 
Evermore to grieve or rage, 
See where furled and folded lie 
Great wings fitted for the sky; 
And where wild sweet forest songs are 
Muted in captivity! 

In a far-off corner shrinks, 

Scornful, proud, a captive lynx; 

A wild wood creature brought to bay, 

Keeping all the space he may, 

In his cage's little distance, 

From our curious gaze away. 

A lone dog from the Cape replies 

To a wild hyena's cries; 

And in narrow circle bound, 

A honey bear walks round and round, 

Pacing out the weary moments 

With nose pointed to the ground. 



108 



FROM THE DARK. 

LORD of this world since wind and tide 
And changing aeons came to be, 
Waft from the skies the clouds that hide 
The stricken earth from Thee! 

From where Thou sittest, throned in Day, 
Beyond these nights of blood and pain, 

Thou seest we seek Thy perfect way 
And that we seek in vain. 

Thou seest the nations bloom, and fall 
Before the scythe like Summer grass, 

The strength of men made naught, and all 
The piteous pageant pass. 

Behold, the children of the Sun 
Are tempted with ignoble ease, 

And those Thou settest Thy seal upon 
Still ravage earth and seas! 

We tread so blindedly the way, 
Lord of the reaper and the grain — 

Oh, flash through whirling clouds some ray 
To make the long road plain! 



109 



GUNDA'S PRAYER. 

(For two years, Gunda, the elephant in the Bronx 
Zoological Park, was chained to the concrete 
floor by two legs, unable to move more than a couple 
of feet from the one spot.) 

THE time is long, Lord God, the time is long! 
From the gray dawn to twilight evensong, 
From evensong until the break of day, 
Year after year, lo, captive kept alway, 
I may not move but as Thy great tides sway! 

The time is long, Lord God, the time is long! 
And I would roam my trackless wastes among; 
The tempests call, the sunshine beckons me, 
The deep pools in the jungle lands I see, 
And I am restless, longing to be free. 

The time is long, Lord God, the time is long! 
That I am punished who have done no wrong; 
Chained in slow torture and dull agony 
For idler's gaze, or child of man to see, 
Whom Thou hast given dominion over me! 

The time is long, Lord God, the time is long! 
For death releases weaklings, not the strong; 
And I, thus helpless in captivity, 
Was strong and swift and great as creatures be, 
And living thus, gave glory unto Thee. 



1X0 



The time is long, Lord God, the time is long! 
Hear Thou my prayer, O Maker, who art strong 
And mayst deliver in extremity! 
I pray as all Thy creatures pray to Thee — 
Hark Thou my prayer, Lord God, and set me free! 

A WEST INDIAN SABBATH. 

ACROSS the blue sky soft white clouds are 
sailing, 

Below me spreads the iridescent sea; 
And o'er the cliff sweet blow the zephyrs, wafting 

Cathedral melody. 
So sweetly soft upon the green earth falleth 

The Sabbath stillness of God's perfect rest, 
As though His spirit in the silence brooded 

With wings upon its breast! 
Through arch beyond arch of azure vaulted heavens 

Rising in sunshine over earth and sea, 
"Let not your heart be troubled," comes the mes- 
sage 

His angel bears to me. 
"Lo, in my Father's house are many mansions, 

And where I am there may ye be also!" 
O we of little faith, hath He not shown us 

The Way that we must go? 
Along the bank the purple sage is blooming, 

The scarlet salvia flashes from the grass, 
And manna from the bread-fruit tree is falling 

Around me as I pass. 

HI 



AT THE TURN OF THE YEAR. 

"T?ATHER, mine hour is come! The twelft 

J- stroke falls, 
I faint before Thy Throne amid the snows! 
Here at Thy feet the burden I lay down — 
A heart, all deep despair and bitterness, 
For deeds undone that I was given to do, 
And many a battle lo^t upon the way. 
My strength diminished to this feeble end, 
Weary and old I die; my youth's fair dreams 
Forever vanished in this cold, gray mist; 
The firs and hemlocks, black above the snows, 
Like shades of passions spent, environ me; 
Sorrow alone remains, and vain regret, 
Remembering the promise of my spring!" 

Down from His Rings of ever-circling Light, 

Stooped pityingly the Lord of Life and Time, 

And laid His touch upon the dying Year. 

"Beloved, rise! I give to thee again 

Thy radiant youth, more glorious than of old; 

Sweeter and wiser, stronger with each death, 

For the endeavor and the burdens borne 

From cycle unto cycle! Go, once more, 

And love and strive and conquer! Thou art Min 

And Mine the Event, and I will not forsake. 

Lo! in the East thy star shines! It is Morn!" 



112 



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